By Dave Ahearn
Slashing $1 billion out of ballistic missile defense, with cuts aimed at programs that kill enemy missiles in their most vulnerable phase of flight, would knock out the balance in the overall missile defense shield guarding the United States from attack, according to officials.
So said a statement Friday from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), responding to a news story that major cuts in missile defense programs may be imposed in fiscal 2010.
Slashing funds or delaying the Airborne Laser (ABL) program would come just as the ABL program has succeeded, meeting its requirements, an official with Boeing [BA] indicated yesterday, noting its repeated achievements.
“We have successfully run two Long Duration Lasing tests and are currently preparing to go into High Power System level tests in early November,” Mike Rinn, Boeing vice president and ABL program director, told Space & Missile Defense Report, sister publication of Defense Daily.
“These tests will begin with a short duration lasing event performed end to end through the Beam Control system and out the turret into a Calorimeter and Range Simulator diagnostic system. These tests will gradually increase in duration in preparation for flight tests in early 2009.”
And all that builds up to the big test next year, in which the ABL plane will go airborne and shoot down a ballistic missile in flight, proving the worth of the ABL system.
In other words, if funding cuts are made or the program is stretched out, that would come just as years of successful investment in ABL are about to pay off.
The story reported that the next president and Congress being elected next month may choose to make deep cuts in missile defense programs of “at least $1 billion” out of a total $11 billion currently, according to Rob Soofer, professional staff member with the Senate Armed Services Committee. He spoke last week at a Heritage Foundation panel forum focused on missile defense (Defense Daily, Oct, 17).
Cuts would center on less-advanced programs such as the ABL and Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI), which would eliminate enemy missiles shortly after they are launched, in the “boost” phase of their trajectories.
Such a budgetary approach would favor more advanced programs that use interceptors to strike enemy missiles later in flight, in the midcourse or terminal phases of their trajectories. Those advanced programs include the sea-based Aegis weapon control and guidance system paired with a Standard Missile interceptor, the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, the Patriot Advanced Capability interceptor, and the Ground-based Midcourse Defense shield. Aegis systems already are installed on Navy ships, and GMD already is installed in ground silos in Alaska and California.
The programs are vital to missile defense, but the boost-phase programs still in development also are critically needed for a balanced, complete missile shield, the MDA noted.
The long-term strategy in developing the shield is that it should have 75 percent of the investment going to the near-term, already developed systems, but that 25 percent of the investment should go to programs such as KEI and ABL.
If funds for those future programs are slashed, then what has been fielded today will become obsolete, the MDA noted.
Aegis is a Lockheed Martin [LMT] missile defense weapons control program that guides a Raytheon [RTN] Standard Missile interceptor. The Airborne Laser is a program involving a heavily-modified 747-400 jumbo jet aircraft by prime contractor Boeing, a laser system by Northrop Grumman [NOC] and a beam control/fire control system by Lockheed Martin. Boeing also leads the GMD program, while Lockheed Martin leads the THAAD program.
The KEI program, using an interceptor to strike an enemy missile in various stages of flight, is led by Northrop Grumman.
U.S. policymakers, including Congress, years ago determined that a multilayered missile shield must be developed to counter rapidly increasing missile threats confronting the United States.
For example, North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon successfully, and has launched short- and medium-range missiles, and is developing an ICBM, the Taepo Dong-2, threatening the United States.
Iran is producing nuclear materials, defying the United Nations and world opinion, and it also is developing steadily longer-range missiles, threatening Europe. It also is developing a space program, which would involve the same basic technology as an ICBM.
A key factor with boost-phase missile defense systems such as ABL and KEI is that they are able to take out enemy missiles in their most vulnerable time of flight, just after launch. That is when the enemy missile is emitting a hot rocket exhaust that is easy for U.S. defense systems to track. Also, that comes before the enemy missile can spew forth multiple warheads or confusing chaff or decoys.
Further, by attempting to strike an enemy missile early in its flight path, if the enemy weapon survives that first attempt, there still is time to take it down in its midcourse or terminal phases of flight. With ABL, unlike an interceptor rocket that must strike the enemy missile at one very precise point in time and space, the ABL laser can continue firing until the enemy missile disintegrates.
The ABL program is progressing, meeting its milestones and poised for its first target missile shoot-down in a test next year. Assuming the test is successful, any major cuts in the ABL program in fiscal 2010 would, ironically, come just after the system proved itself. If no more ABL aircraft are purchased, Soofer noted, that could leave them in the status of being little more than technology demonstrators.
Another element with the ABL system is that it costs a small fraction as much to use a laser — a concentrated beam of light–to kill an enemy missile, compared to the cost of firing an interceptor rocket to take down the enemy missile.
Also, as Soofer noted, missile defense is extremely cost-effective: while all U.S. spending over decades on missile defense amounts to perhaps $100 billion, the cost of damage caused by the 9/11 al Qaeda attacks on the United States was nearly as great. And al Qaeda terrorists used nothing more than airplanes as guided bombs.
According to Soofer, all the cost of missile defense programs is minuscule compared to the cost of damage that just one nuclear-tipped enemy missile would wreak on a single U.S. city.